Today I saved a life, so I am AWESOME >:E

Right, so I've more than likely peaked your interest with the title of this blog. You're wondering "Wow, really? What do you mean by that?" And I will tell you. No, I didn't save an old granny from being run over by a steamroller. It wasn't that epic. But neither am I bragging about something small like donating blood that may save a life somewhere sometime in the future. As I am typing there is a thistle rash on my foot that is making itself known to my nervous system (as if it hasn't had enough problems this year), but it's not much more than a little nuisance to me, because I know that I did something great today, and that rash is a Medal of Honour. The life of a young songthrush hung in the balance, and I snatched its essence from the jaws of the great beyond and gave it a second chance.

I don't suppose you're familiar with our cat Scotty.



Well, he's not our cat, but he lives in the local area and seems to have adopted us as another set of owners. Every day he comes in and pesters us for food. We give him food, and he usually leaves straight afterwards. But if we're lucky he'll hang around for a while so we can show our affection for him that he's mostly likely not too interested in, what with him being, you know, a selfish, lazy cat wherein his little mind humans are his servants. Sometimes he'll sit on the stairs and we'll "play" with him with his ball. While the results are usually hilarious, there is an unfortunate side effect. We're teaching this cat how to jump up, pull a bird to the ground, and pummel the poor thing to death for usually little more than his own amusement. Scotty is a mass murderer and a systematic assassin of the garden's eco-system.



It's a very different picture where instead of a ball that fortunately cannot feel pain, it's a poor defenseless creature completely at his mercy. Every so often we find the body of something - a little bird, a vole (Scotty was killing them off for a whole week and I'd be surprised if there are any left), whatever he could get his paws on. Yesterday, it was a borking grass snake! We don't see those very often and it's always a treat when we do - but it's not so pleasant when one has been sighted all mangled from a first-hand Scotty mauling. It hadn't been killed, but it was in a very bad state - we're not sure if it was any kinder to let it go rather than let Scotty finish it off. But that's the thing.

I never considered that beings other than humans could kill for pleasure. My reasoning was that we had evolved into civilised beings that evolved past the stage of instinct and allowed us to take what we want from this earth, not abiding by any sort of natural order. Creatures in the wild surely only take what they need to survive. If they eat too much of their natural prey, then their numbers die out so their prey can repropagate. Apparently this isn't the case and while nature is ruthless enough, it seems that cats kill for pleasure just as we are able to - not constrained by Nature's ways of shaping them into an orderly fashion, only killing to survive.

Despite this, Scotty is still lovable. As you can imagine from the video, he's like a barrel of laughs to us when he's in the mood for it. It's a shame that he probably takes it a little too far. When playing he seems to go into a heightened state, sort of like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. At the same time he's usually in a state we call "Kill Mode" where anything that moves is something he'll claw at. I made the mistake of trying to stroke him before playtime was over and got a little scratch from him. It wasn't much of an injury but it was something to beware of. Scotty is built to kill.

Okay, so there's another side to this argument - we can't really stop Scotty from killing things all the time, he's a psycho but that's just how he's programmed, as much as I hate to have to accept it. The ways of nature dictate that only the strong survive - anything that was careless enough to catch a disease or become injured, impeding its ability to run from a predator will mean that the predator will target it and kill the careless animal so that its friends have time to escape and can do a better job of living than it. The weaker ones are killed off so the stronger (or perhaps luckier) ones survive. The result is that the animals with strong or lucky genes survive and are more successful. So, Scotty killing things only makes their species stronger, right?

Not exactly.

Birds don't always catch disease. They don't all get injured. Many things that can lead to the downfall of a bird in its life can be avoided if they play their cards right. But every bird starts out as a baby bird. A dumb, weak, defenseless baby bird that can't do much other than stand around screaming at its mother to shove something down its gob for nourishment because it can't take care of itself. You know, something that a predator like Scotty can rub out without a problem. We're training this cat to kill, so we should damn well keep an eye on him so that he doesn't kill off something that needs a chance to learn about life and how to avoid predators. Darwinian rant over.

Now, on to the awesome story. WITH ACCURATELY DEPICTING... PICTURES!



I came down the stairs swinging my plastic black stick around like some kind of katana and wielding some crude cardboard contraption that resembled an odd custom-built revolver... LIKE A BOSS. I wasn't sure what I was hoping to achieve by doing this but I would usually roam around the house after an hour or so of Metroid Prime 2 on the Wii after I woke up, before starting up my laptop and wasting the rest of day doing trivial and un-resourceful things... like NOT working very hard on James and I's new project. (Don't worry, it's going slowly but nonetheless going... I think it's all waiting on me right now at the moment... o.o')

I heard a familiar noise behind me as I was going into the conservatory. Ah yes, the awfully-coloured turquoise bell around the horrible yellow neon collar of our daily visitor Scotty. He was sitting a few steps up from the bottom of the stairs looking at me rather funny. It must have been the total racket I was making, which my family know I am incredibly prone to making. I decided to stay still so as not to frighten him, and he broke into a fast trot... TOWARDS ME, into the conservatory. What went through his mind must have been a mix of "OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT ONE DOING" and "OH HEY THAT SCARY WEIRDO MIGHT PERHAPS FEED ME BECAUSE I'M GREEDY". I didn't know how long he'd been in and I asked Dad if he'd been fed. He said yes, but hadn't had a lot. So I decided to give him an extra serving and stroke him and stuff. After the worst attempt of getting foul-smelling cat food out of a plastic sachet ever witnessed, and smearing gravy on his face, I decided that that was enough attention for Scotty and went to go wash my hands. When I came out, Mum and Dad were out and told me to move slowly.

There were a family of THREE songthrushes just outside. There was one youngster, a mother, and another one that stood around like a lemon. We thought then it would be a good idea to keep Scotty inside, because, you know, he'd borking kill one. But he'd probably been in for some time and was getting impatient, making precious MEOW noises in an attempt to appeal to our like of cute noises. After a few minutes of watching the thrushes, we decided to let him out. The thing was that it was raining, and Scotty wouldn't like that, so Mum made the gambit of letting him out thinking he would come in again because it was so grey, and wet, and miserable, and... British. Out went Scotty.

The rain didn't bother him in the slightest bit.

We knew where he was going - heading straight for where the thrushes were. We were alerted to see him jump just out of sight, then coming back into view with one of them IN HIS borkING MOUTH. In the next moments the epicness went up to 11. And this music started playing. I didn't know where it was coming from, but I didn't care, because SHIT JUST GOT REAL.












AND THEN THERE WERE EXPLOSIONS AND FLYING RAINBOW UNICORNS BUT THEN I GOT TIRED OF DRAWING IN PAINT. ALSO THAT PART DIDN'T HAPPEN AND THIS WHOLE THING IS CHRONICALLY EXAGGERATED.

I brought the little murderer back inside. He let out a long pitful MEOOOOOOOOW but the general response from the three of us was something like "NO. SHUT YOUR GOB YOU DEPRAVED CRETIN". Apparently he went to sleep in the master bedroom, so it looks like he won't be troubling little birds for another 12 hours now, at least.

My Dad congratulated me as being a "fearless, lion-hearted hero who saved the life of the baby bird from a pointless and gruesome death". Where is that bird now? We don't know. Maybe it'll get better somehow. Maybe it will not survive its injuries. Or maybe it will fall victim to another predator, maybe even Scotty again. But the point is that I saved it and gave it another chance. At last, my inner paladin had a chance to shine through and protect those close to my heart... or something. Too bad no-one really needs a knight in shining armour these days. What do I do, save you from a smoking addiction? Or a sub-standard boyfriend? Maybe I was born into the wrong era. I should have been a Viking or something. Nah, too many dragons. And not enough internet.














You want an epic story with epic illustrations, a link to some epic music AND some epic guy's Vlog, AND the conclusion to Teh Ebil Fridge Saga all in one post?


There's no pleasing some people. ¬.¬

This post is over a month old. But I promise it doesn't smell. Now with amusing compy-drawn pictures!

YAY STUFF IS HAPPENING, INTERNET POWERS ACTIVATE!!!!

With any luck, I won't need to become a guest on Embarrasing Illnesses anymore, as my awesome doctor was able to help me clean up my act and prevent me from getting inflamed nerves! As I speak - er, type - my laptop is about six inches higher than it was before, held aloft by a large folder full of old drawings from middle school that I'm not amazingly proud of, and about twelve Nintendo magazines. This primitive construction means that I'll no longer subconsciously compress myself into the shape of a lowercase r when immersed in attempting to win in Starcraft II with my Terran 3 Barrack Opener and Timing Push or overcome the challenge of a Force-A-Nature wielding Scout with my Scout wielding his standard, less notoriously over-powered scattergun variant. Yep, in my life these words make sense -- this is the thing of why I'm not too talkative most of the time.



Well, the past two weeks I've been at school. The first week with partial lessons - that is, the Drama-esque side of Performing Arts, which I had just one lesson from Monday to Thursday. (Just four lessons that week? Now I'm just showing off with all this time off I'm getting. Someone punch or shun me.) The next week? Oh yeah. Year 13 started.



W... wait. WHAT??!




Thank Beef I'm getting into the habit of speaking up and trying to get all the facts from people (yeah I worship cows now, deal with it), because that would have came right the flip out of left field and hit me as hard and suddenly as a Coke and Mentos Rocket if it weren't for my awesome friends mentioning that normal lessons were back this week, albeit in passing. So, after having a brief spaz attack in a fiery background I was sent back to school to start Year 13 TWO GLOMPING MONTHS EARLY. Still, with much thought, I've concluded that school helps to give me a chance to interact socially with some genuinely amazing people and I owe the school greatly for giving me a purpose. My poor brother has just finished school and is now doomed to have nothing to do all day except sit at his computer... uhm, doing whatever he does now. I'm not sure, we parted ways about two years ago. That is, he just moved down a floor and I stayed on the second floor. With that said, you should go check out HIS blog, or rather VLOG by clickin this little thingy right here. So now he can't hit me because I'm plugging his blog and that cancels out the smack talk I just said about how he now has no life thanks to finishing school. That works out, right? Right?

*sighs and awaits a smack from the brother in question*

So, it's been a week of the EXTREMELY SECRET SURGICAL STRIKE on Year 13. I can use this opportunity to connect with the people I hang with and enjoy the time I have till it's off to a new life in OSTRAAAALEUH in a years time. Still, putting that in a not completely depressing perspective, THAT - is quite a long time away. The first week was pretty meh - started with an enthralling and encouraging talk that was in no way depressing or something we'd heard a million times before, and there no way a random stab at a certain local area which was about as amusing and as called for as a grumpy idiot falling on a springboard and being launched into a tree, hitting every branch on the way down making a delicious crunching noise and deserving every moment of it. Yeah, it was nothing like that. I would have rather spent the hour connecting with people, or maybe just watching that lovely image I just typed out AGAIN AND AGAIN FOR A WHOLE HOUR. I'M SURE I WOULD NOT GET TIRED OF IT.

Lessons are okay. I have conquered the hardships of AS History and have now been granted the honor of learning the history of Soviet Russia, the most badass country on the planet. Also, the new coalition history class means that I can make some new friends who I've seen around school but have never had any experiences to share with and talk about until now. So, here's to a good year! *raises 500ml bottle of vodka-free water. yeah, don't think I never realised. I'm not angry. Just very disappointed.*

While I spectacularly FAILED to finish my Y13 Media assignment and hand it in beautifully presented, instead deciding to spend my time on a dated Blizzard game, at least one good thing happened that week to compensate: Example's Changed the Way You Kiss Me made it to Number One on the VIVA Top 40. HOORAY! THE MASSES HAVE EXPRESSED THEIR APPRECIATION FOR SOMETHING THAT ISN'T SAMEY REPETITIVE MAINSTREAM POP JUNK AND HAVE BRIEFLY DEVIATED THEIR INTEREST INTO SOMETHING DIFFERENT! THERE IS HOPE FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC AFTER ALL! [/dickish opinion]

Right now, I've got a good feeling abour the next few weeks to come. The stress of school has worn off and while there's a lot of work to do, I also have a lot of opportunity ahead of me that I'm actually going to go for this time, rather than hardly trying at all to improve my life and then moan to everyone about it, or at least try to improve it but not very hard to make a difference and THEN moan about it. No, I'm gonna take a different approach and be cool, and speak in a language that not just intensive PC Gamers can understand. From this day forward I will think of myself as not a complete alien! As hard as that may be, considering I just said that I worship cows. I don't really, I just think they're awesome because of the many great resources they can give us. Besides, religiously, I like to think of myself more as Buddhist. A lazy one, at that, but I'm no peon to the bovine. I'm a grateful exploiter of the bovine.

NOW, TIME TO BEAT UP THAT FRIDGE, WAHEY

I fired mah lazar at Teh Ebil Fridge. I thought I might as well, you know, having it charged and ready from last time, that being like... six months ago. The blast catapulted Teh Ebil Fridge down the road and it landed face(?) down on top of a Year 7. I felt kind of bad for them, but only for a split-second. The Fridge then hovered in the air, rotated so that it was upright, shot back dangerously close to me and then landed with an ominous thud. I hopped backwards to a safe distance but was still rattled by the shockwave. That Fridge was heavy. And he looked PO'ed.

"IMPRESSIVE... ALMOST," it remarked. "BUT NOW YOU SHALL BEAR WITNESS TO MY MOST FORMIDABLE ATTACK, FOOL!"

It opened up and inside was a dark briefcase. It suddenly flipped open and a hundred pieces of paper flew out, spinning like ninja stars. They all flew at me and buffeted me like a wintry gust of wind - hostile and unforgiving. After a few moments the attack subsided and I was left rather cut up about the whole thing. Paper cuts are always the worst. Luckily, the badass that I am, I wasn't too concerned about the damage it had inflicted on me, which wasn't anything to cry about.

"Tell me," I asked Teh Ebil Fridge, "Just what the Beef was that attack supposed to mean? You call that formidable?" One of the pieces of paper lying crumpled on the ground caught my eye. I looked at it and it seemed to be some kind of formal document that councils are so fond of passing around when there's a big decision to make (which they then spectacularly ignore and make their own selfish and usually detrimental decision).

"Formal documents? Did you mean something else when you said this was a formidable attack? Not only is this a lame-ass pun, it's completely impractical. Okay, so you've irritated the nerves around the outer layer of my body, but quite frankly, I've been left with more impressive cuts and bruises out in MY GARDEN!" I at least hope that I sounded a little badass considering that I was insulting an evil fridge by declaring my new love for gardening to it. I thought that to reinforce this attempt as badassery, I would describe one certain instance in horrific detail.

"I tell you, once I forced the ENTIRE length of a thorn into my FOREARM. And there was BLOOD. But it only make me stronger! Just like Kanye West!!!" I grinned proudly at what I'd said. For a moment, then I realised what I had said could have scarcely been more stupid, unless I had incorporated the word 'swagger' into that sentence, but then I would have to garote myself were that the case.
"RRRRGH, WHY CAN'T I ACTUALLY GET THE HANG OF BEING BADASS? IS THAT SIMPLE PLEASURE REALLY TOO MUCH TO ASK?!" I shouted, noticing the error of my ways and venting my frustration to the world. Unfortunately very little did come of this, except for the fact that it spontaneously ignited a passing blackbird that collapsed in a charred heap.

After a lenghty pause from the two of us at this unfortunate event, I decided that it was time to move on from this long-winded and uninteresting bullplop and start fighting or something otherwise captivating for the readers of this blog (and a persistent lot you are).
"Okay Ebil Fridge. Enough random birds have died this day! Now I shall descend upon you with swift wrath and great justice!" I said and engaged with an obligatory jump into melee combat.

SHORYUKEN!!!!

Well, if Teh Ebil Fridge were right above me rather than right in front of me, the attack would have been any good. It seemed that the dumbass input commands (that I apparently have to obey despite this not actually being in a fighting game and in a semi-realistic world) actually caused me to perform the wrong move. Clunky controls are a thing I have come to resent in my time playing games like these for their unreliability, and in games like Street Fighter that require split-second strategising and specific and decisive blows to win... that - simply does not work in my head.

"DUDE WHAT. I THOUGHT YOU WERE TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY NOW." quipped Teh Ebil Fridge. "NO MATTER. I WILL TAKE MY TRUE FORM AND DESTROY YOU!!!" And it turned into some kind of intimidating robot demi-god with four sets of metallic wings and a lance as long as Queensway.

I was taken aback, but, I was not intimidated. I was not shocked. I was not nauseous. I was not even SLIGHTLY aroused.

I was INSULTED.

"WHAAAAAT?!?!?!" I yelled in a mighty roar that echoed across the stars that even Brian Blessed would have been proud of, not in fright or shock but in pure seething indignance. "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! NO, REALLY, SERIOUSLY?!

"Why the Beef is it that these villains have to always transform about three times?! Can't they just die?! Surely it takes a massive amount of energy to COMPLETELY transform your entire body, to be able to put up a cheaper fight! Surely that would kill you if you've just received a massive smackdown?! And another thing, what sort of meaning does it have to the viewing audience?! What the hell kind of lesson is that supposed to teach?! Don't worry kids, if you're not good enough, just change into something completely different! HERP DERP. NO! That's the action plan of cowards who have WAY too much power to play with! I believe in inner strength, not transforming or going Super Saiyan 4 or what have you! That just makes normal human beings look feeble by comparison and we're NOT! We are capable of almost anything if we put our minds to it! And vanquishing an evil fridge that's turned into a mechanical cluster-kerfuffle is certainly NO EXCEPTION! SO THERE!!!"

Good heavens! Ben's anger has exploded like never before! Or something! Now that fridge will pay for randomly stacking the odds against him! Or at least he will, in... sigh, sorry about this... part 3. Which will be soon. Okay? I promise you.

Just six months? It's been an eternity.

What happenin' guys? A lot more than a lack of posts for 6 months can say, to be honest. Well, Year 12 is done and dusted, at least for the moment. But like a Cocchafer beetle that flies into your computer room at about 10 o'clock at night because you forgot to close up the windows that proceeds to ram its massive body against the lamp just above your head, you just know it's not going to end with a single battle of turning the lights off and trying to direct it out of the window by shining a torch on it (WHICH DOESN'T WORK ANYWAY). It comes back again and again, just when you thought it had given up and left you alone for good (the blasted thing even faked its own death once, devious little massive scoundrel).

I've wanted to keep this under wraps so that people don't strike me down with evil leers of pure envy, but my exams were over within a week of Study Leave. I don't want to admit that. I'm sure there are a ton of people I know who deserve that kind of karma. Even now, exams are still going on as far as I'm concerned. Well, I've already posted about the logical trainwreck of having to take written exams in a previous post, which you may peruse later at your own leisure. So now I guess is the point where I talk about all the things I have been spending my time with and enjoying to a sickening degree over the past two and a half weeks without having to worry about school, such as my obsession with StarCraft II resurfacing full force after I discover that I can download maps easily and play with other people online. Fear not, I have been suffering a tad to even the score.

So, I've had this problem lately. One morning I'll wake up and discover that a random patch on my torso feels like it's been bitten by some demonic thing with massive teeth, as it seems to be overreacting to anything touching it like an insane hermit in a bustling city and my nerves in that patch think they are constantly on fire every sodding moment something is in contact with it, like my t-shirt rubbing against it, or particles of air. When I get a brief shiver from a cold breeze or standing in the conservatory which is slightly colder than my computer room, it's very much the same. So, what is the source of this mild day-to-day agony?

Doctor says it's enflamed nerves. It crept up first in January around where my appendix was which was worrying. It hung about subjecting me to tolerable but grating agony for about two weeks. Thankfully I had a big Kinetic Theatre production to think about and that helped take my mind off it. As long as I was deeply involved in something I would forget about the pain. However, it has returned for the third time this year one Monday morning probably a week after study leave (probably the price I pay for having exams finished early). I was given painkillers for it but it doesn't do much good to ease the pain and it goes away on its own eventually, so they're pretty useless in the long run. I wanted this biological buffoonery to stop once and for all and asked for another appointment, hoping to gain something more than just painkillers. I did some brief research beforehand and whatever the cause, it didn't look good. The most likely cause is apparently some arse of a virus that decides to mess your systems up for no reason. However, my dad suggested it was because my computer desk (at which I spend about 8 hours of the day at the least) is quite low, and the compelling experience of Stacraft II or Bioshock is such that he finds me doubled over my desk, as I'm trying to get myself as immersed in the intensity as possible by having my face right up to the screen. The doctor confirmed this as the likeliest cause. So, I'm so obsessed with my computer that my body develops an insufferable illness to give me the message? Well, I think I'm definitely due for a change of habit now. The doctor said I should spend a week off the computer. Yeah no problem Doc, I spend about a week off the computer... over the course of a year. Hum. I think taking baby steps at a time is in order here.

My enflamed nerves have not been troubling me for a while now in fact. Since it's been two and a half weeks they're bound to be on the way out by now, but I have been spending an hour or two every day or so off the computer. So, where have I been going where the delights of Blizzard, 2K Games or Valve are not there? My friends, I have recently taken a shine... to gardening.

YES. GARDENING, BITCH.

Seriously, I'm a perfectionist at heart, and so there's nothing better for me to do than to cut away the overgrowth that's accumulated in our massive garden over the past five years. There's plenty to go around with the size of my house. And I'll be up for anything if I get a massive pair of clippers to dismember plants with, or better yet, the hedge trimmer - a device not much short of a freakin' chainsaw.

So to summarize, gardening is a great cure for enflamed nerves brought on from Repetitive Strain Injury. Who knew?

Tune in next post, when I sort out that damned evil Fridge that I've been meaning to finish off for about two or three posts. Hopefully my partial days in school starting from the 6th won't take too great a toll on my blog-writing. But what I can say is: There will be a bus. So, until next time... stay frosty. Wait, it's summer. Damn, that doesn't work. Oh well.




SUMMER!!!